Flyers start early, finish off Jets

By ROB PARENT, 21st Century Media

Friday, November 29, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — With a brutal road trip ahead of them, the Flyers treated themselves to a much-needed confidence boost at home Friday. Not so coincidentally, it was a player who only recently reinflated his confidence who provided the morning jolt his team needed.

Leading an aggressive forechecking effort and earning a well-timed goal as a personal reward, Sean Couturier keyed a mostly outstanding team defensive effort on the way to a 2-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets in front of the lunch crowd at Wells Fargo Center.

Centering a third line that had right wing shooter Matt Read back in the fold after a one-game absence with a foot bruise, Couturier was on top of the Jets from the opening puck drop. He joined linemates Read and Steve Downie with instantly penning the Jets up, and it forced a defensive error that resulted in Scott Hartnell being teed up for a goal all of 48 seconds into the game.

How’s that for a nice wakeup call off the rare 11:38 a.m. first drop of the puck?

“I’ll take it,” Hartnell said. “It’s nice, your first shift just having it go right into the slot there; a nice little present waiting for you. We needed to have a big start. We got the crowd into it, which is awesome.”

While always useful as a checking-line center, Couturier hasn’t displayed much of a scoring knack all season. He finally scored one off a bad angle Nov. 19 against Ottawa, and since then has registered four points in five games while creating scoring chances all over the ice. He does that especially well when the other team’s guys are carrying the puck.

As an example of that Friday, Couturier picked off a puck during a Winnipeg power play, skated down on a breakaway and beat Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec with a change-of-pace backhander that gave the Flyers a 2-0 lead 5:36 into the second period.

“We wanted to have a good start,” Couturier said. “The last few games we didn’t really have good first periods. We just wanted to put pucks deep, keep it simple and get a good forecheck going in the first period. We did a good job.”

Not so for the Jets, who couldn’t create much of anything and weren’t helped by the loss of winger Evander Kane, who was knocked out of the game off a hit by Braydon Coburn. But even with that hurtful loss, the Jets seemed strangely off their game.

Asked if he had any “theories” as to why his guys “came out a bit flat,” Jets coach Claude Noel offered up: “No, I don’t have a theory. I’ll just keep the theories to myself.”

Happy Holidays!Flyers goalie Steve Mason, who stopped 25 shots, had to appreciate the effort, which hadn’t been there in losses Monday in South Florida and Wednesday in Tampa with Ray Emery playing the crease victim that night.

But in this one-shop stop home, Mason wasn’t too stressed against the Jets (12-12-4), who came into the game on a 6-2-2 run that had included a shootout victory over the Flyers two weeks earlier. After wins in New Jersey and Long Island earlier in the week, the Jets’ lines looked slow and weary, and their power play was punchless, going oh-for-6 against a Flyers penalty kill that in recent games hadn’t been very special.

“We just weren’t engaged,” Winnipeg winger Devin Setoguchi said. “It’s upon ourselves to be ready to battle. ... We woke up there later on, but too late.”

Maybe it was the early start that somehow got to the Jets and didn’t seem to bother the Flyers any.

“Yeah, when you come into the rink at 8 in the morning it’s kind of weird,” Claude Giroux said. “But I just had a couple coffees and I was ready to go.”

Giroux didn’t make a points push; on this rare day both Flyers goals were unassisted. But Giroux joined a full-scale Flyers effort to play a controlled and effective two-way game against the Jets.

The timing couldn’t have been better, since the Flyers were coming off two sleepy losses in Florida that not only ended a 6-0-1 run, but could have eroded their confidence with a crazy six-game road trip kicking off Saturday in Nashville.

“Our Florida effort was terrible; both games,” Mason said. “We were pretty lackluster, so coming home and getting a big win before we go on the road for 13 days here is definitely a step in the right direction.”

From a power play standpoint, the Flyers are still out of synch. Once again, they failed to produce as much of a hint of an attack, even during a two-man advantage for 1:23 that didn’t move Pavelec to as much as break a sweat.

But Pavelec had to be on the move right away as Couturier, Read and Downie instantly had the Jets jumping. The puck then bounced off the skate of Olli Jokinen into the slot, and a double deflection by Downie and Winnipeg’s Dustin Byfuglien sent the puck magically out to Hartnell, who had just come onto the ice in time to send it back into the net.

“Obviously it wasn’t the start we were looking for,” the Jets’ Michael Frolik said. “In these early games it’s not easy, but it’s a little bit different. There is no excuse.”

The Flyers (11-12-2) kept up their aggressive act on both ends of the ice, and doubled the lead off Couturier’s pick and roll up the ice.

“I think I was due,” said Couturier, who in the first period was prevented from scoring a shorthanded goal only via a nice reverse stretch of Pavelec’s padded leg. “I just tried to put it 5-hole and it found a way to trickle into the back of the net.”

The Flyers’ only weak defensive moment came after the Jets’ sixth failed power play opportunity. A scramble in the Flyers’ defensive zone resulted in a goal for Frolik. But the Flyers shut Winnipeg down from there, and now hope they can carry that kind of play on the road with them.